I see where you're coming from, sourgirl but some of the comments, whether intended that way or not, came across as 'shut up, quit your whining, you've got issues. you're imagining a problem.

I am happy to read about the possible upsides of secondary. I do not, however, want to be told that the problem I'm discussing is imaginary and not worth talking about. That is what I kept hearing.

I think that this particular issue is a chicken/egg thing. Does the label encourage poor treatment of secondaries or did the treatment give rise to the label? Are they even correlated? Labels are powerful and they can influence us more than we know. I suspect that it is a complex issue with a complex answer. I think it is possible that the term secondary can unintentionally promote some patterns of behavior that are less than desirable. Think about a label like community college. It is an institution that fills a distinct and beneficial role. Yet, it can often be seen as a negative label. Even more so, the term, junior college. That is probably why they mostly go by community colleges now. Never underestimate the power of a word.